The present invention relates to improved spreaders for fertilizer for the fairways of golf courses. Golf course fairways are usually planted in grass, which require considerable attention and care to maintain its vigorous growing condition. One of the main forms for care is the application of fertilizer to maintain a growing habit and attractive green color. Golf course fairways are the distinct growing area, often bounded by golf course roughs and having within them the putting greens which receive even more care than the fairways. The attention directed towards the green is not the same as that for the more expansive areas known as the fairways. Although as a general matter, fairways are desirably fertilized, the application of the fertilizer is preferably not uniform. In particular, environmental regulations indicate that excessive fertilizations are to be avoided to avoid run off to streams, so there are constraints on how much fertilizer should be applied. In addition, excess applications to areas where fertilizer is not desired leads to a waste of the expense of the fertilizer.
The fertilizer application industry for the past decade or so has used GPS guidance to correlate where to apply fertilizer in a growing field, particularly for agricultural applications, and the technology for determining the location of a spreader by GPS is reasonably well developed in order to allow the spreader to know with usable precision where it is in an agricultural field. Indeed, it is known to use GPS positioning to accurately turn on and off the individual applicators of a liquid application fertilizer on golf courses. In those instances, nozzles on booms extended from the sides of a moving vehicle are each individually controlled to turn on and off as required for the location over which they are located.
However, it is not known to have accurate application of granular fertilizer on golf courses in accordance with GPS readings.